


Violent, sweet, perfect words

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [59]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, John resists punching people, John used to be in a band, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock's Voice, Sherlock's sentiment is showing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is back and consulting with the Met again, as brilliant and as abrasive as ever. Some people at the Met think Sherlock talks too much. But after a year longing to hear that voice, John's in no mood to listen to those opinions</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violent, sweet, perfect words

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Dee Natsuko, who did a quick beta and made this story better.
> 
> The title is a lyric from Matt Nathanson's Come on Get Higher.

It’s their tenth case with the Met since Sherlock’s return. The first with a unit other than Lestrade’s. None of the others have been credited to them, at Sherlock’s insistence. John has case notes that may become short stories in due course, but he’s only blogging their non-police cases right now. They agreed. Low profile. No public credit, no media attention. That doesn’t mean no work, however.

This case won’t have Sherlock’s name anywhere but the internal reports either. It’s only a six, at best, but Sherlock is so bored that even a six will get him out of the house now. He’s building up trust again, with the Met, an obligation that annoys him but he recognises it. A lot of coppers feel they owe him for what happened, now that the whole truth is out. A lot of them, though, they still resent him.

For some reason which is beyond John’s capacity to fathom, a lot of the resentful ones feel that somehow John shares their opinion in the mistaken belief that he’s pissed off with Sherlock for faking his death.

John, for his part, has to make a special effort not to punch people. He doesn’t need anything worse than an ASBO on his record, thanks very much. It’s only due to Mycroft (and hadn’t he resented _that_ at the time) that the only consequence of chinning that dickhead DCS Bowker, was that he had to submit to an anger management course - _so_ much fun.

So, like Sherlock, he is trying to rebuild bridges. They need consulting work, and whatever Sherlock thinks, they need to be paid for it, and so John bites his inner lip and lets the forensic officer, Beaton, talk.

John deeply regrets the necessity.

“Christ, does he ever shut up?” Beaton is complaining.

Sherlock is striding around the crime scene, in full verbal flight. John was just thinking what a magnificent display it was, even with the insults flying as hot and thick as the brilliant observations. He knows Sherlock does himself no favours with the acid tongue, but well, when the lanky git is right, he’s right. The first officer on the scene _was_ a moron for moving the murder weapon, and a worse one for putting it back. The other attending officers missed the fact that the victim’s pro-Razor scooter had blood on the underside and had therefore been moved prior even to the first officer messing up the scene and seriously, _seriously_ , did they not _see_ that the victim was left-handed and could not possibly have injured his own elbow in that fashion?

If Sherlock is treating them all as utterly risible, well, he has just cause.

Sherlock, in the midst of questioning whether the nearby Sergeant is capable of even making notes, _or are the words still being echoing round that vacant space between your ears, go on, move your lips and sound them out, I’ve got all day, nothing better to do, and it’s always so much more fun to have to pursue the murderer into Scotland, or Calais, or bloody Poland, while you work out how to spell ‘polyurethane’._

“He’s supposed to be so clever, but good god, the mouth on him,” Beaton continues to complain, “I bet he gets punched a lot, to shut him up. How the hell do you manage? You live with the mouthy bastard, don’t you?”

John sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, because he knows what comes next. It’s what always comes next, in some form or another.

“Does he shut up in bed? Suppose you might have to gag him for that,” a quick glance down to John’s crotch and up, indicating the mighty shut-Sherlock-up powers of his penis, apparently, “Or, you know…” The glance is more meaningful, and accompanied by a sly grin and a slight, unconscious rocking of Beaton’s hips in sympathetic emphasis. “Does that make him…?”

John never bothers correcting people who think they’re a couple any more. He certainly can’t be arsed to do so with this offensive specimen - but John has found the end of his tether, and he seriously wants to use it to beat this dickhead senseless.

“Shut. Up.” John says.

“I’ll bet he does,” says Beaton.

“No.” says John. The syllable comes out low, sharp, hard. Like a bullet. “You. Shut. Up. Now.” Four short, sharp bullets.

“Take it easy,” Beaton says, “No offense meant.”

John’s sideways look to Beaton is like a bared blade and leaves Beaton in no doubt that offense was taken anyway.

Sherlock has swept through his tide of blistering commentary, takes in the look on John’s face, raises and eyebrow, then he sweeps on.

“But I mean,” continues Beaton belligerently, “Listen to him go fucking on and on in that poncy fucking voice of his …”

And all John can think of is how for a year he did not hear that ‘poncy voice’, and for most of that time he feared he would never hear it again. He thinks of hovering by that phone, tense as a bow, speaking down the line when all he could hear most nights was a breath. Once or twice a laugh or a cry. The few words he’d heard on those terrible nights when it seemed everything would fall apart and fail, those weren’t in Sherlock’s ‘poncy voice’. Those few words were strained and broken and full of pain.

That ‘poncy voice’ is the voice that once sang with him, and gave him his own voice back, and now sings with him again. It’s a voice that is still sometimes shattered with fear when Sherlock wakes from nightmares. It’s the voice that brings him back to Baker Street from his own nightmares. It’s the voice of _home_ and _safe_ and _whole_. And he nearly lost it forever.

“… and he’s not even getting anywhere near the fucking point…”

“Stop. Talking.”

Beaton hears something dangerous ratcheting up a notch in that tone and falls suddenly silent.

“He has already solved the case. He has been giving you the clues. That you missed. For ten minutes now. And you. Are. Still. Not. Listening. You. Are. Still. Not. Getting. It.”

John closes his eyes slowly, willing his words to stop being bullets before he just hauls off and punches the bastard. “He doesn’t stop _talking_ because he doesn’t stop _seeing_. That _poncy voice_ said more of value in the last ten minutes than you will ever achieve in _your whole career_. That voice solves crimes. That voice saves lives. That …” _that voice is precious to me_.

John clamps his teeth on anything else that wants to spill out. It’s none of Beaton’s fucking business what Sherlock’s voice is to him.

One final breath, and John ends with: “He has solved your murder and told you where to find the killer and given you all the evidence you need to convict in the last ten minutes alone. So. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Take. Notes. And. Arrest. Your. Fucking. Suspect.”

Beaton shuts the fuck up. He marches stiffly away from John, perhaps with a belated sense of self-preservation, and goes about marking off the clues that Sherlock observed so that the case will stand up in court.

John’s eyes are closed, his thumb and forefinger pinched over the bridge of his nose, when he feels the shadow all over him. He looks up at Sherlock looking down at him.

Sherlock’s eyes are vivid, shining. Despite the mere six of the case, he enjoyed himself. John suspects he enjoyed calling the policeman names. He’s missed that, and he doesn’t do it so often with Anderson and Lestrade now. It makes John laugh.

“All right?” Sherlock asks.

“Yeah,” John concedes. He’s not about to tell Sherlock about the argument. Sherlock thinks he’s a sentimental twat enough as it is. “We done here?”

“We were done ten minutes ago,” Sherlock huffs, “But Sergeant Polyurethane couldn’t find his Junior’s First Illustrated Dictionary.”

“Rude twat,” says John, but he’s laughing, “You were brilliant, by the way.”

“Of course.”

“And modest as ever about it too.”

 “Get a fucking room,” snarls Beaton from somewhere to the left.

John’ s curtails a desire to shoot a spitfire response – he’s had it up to fucking here with that moron – but Sherlock ignores him and hustles John away towards a taxi.

Sherlock’s quiet now but in a tearing hurry, and he won’t tell John why. He sits in the cab, casting  guarded glances at John, which John is ignoring as best he can. He suspects Sherlock overheard the fight with Beaton and that Sherlock is making an effort not to call him on his emotional attachment to the sound of Sherlock’s voice. They are more open with each other these days, but still, they’re not especially given to public displays and declarations of that nature. John steels himself for a bit of a lecture on why John lets idiots like Beaton get to him.

When they get to Baker Street, Sherlock makes him wait downstairs and returns five minutes later carrying John’s guitar case in one hand, his own violin case in the other.

John gives Sherlock a puzzled look.

Sherlock grins back. John can see a fast-moving flicker of feeling in Sherlock’s eyes, in the subtle expressions around his mouth. A softness but also an awkwardness, a resolve, then acceptance, and John remembers. Sherlock’s not as uncomfortable with his own sentiment as he used to be.

Sherlock ducks his head down, so that his voice carries only to John’s ears.

“If you’ll recall, I am the one who phoned Baker Street, as regularly as I could safely get away with it. On at least three occasions when it was not really safe at all. I needed…” a slight falter, and the gently chiding humour evaporates under a truth that won’t stay unsaid, and then his voice is firm again. “I needed to hear your voices… _Your_ voice. It became…” another slight stumble, “Absolutely necessary to my survival. Which is absolute nonsense, of course. If anyone is to be accused of nauseating and overweening sentimentality in this instance, John, it isn’t you.”

All the tension bleeds out of John’s body. He feels suddenly exhausted, but there’s a stupid grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. He’s trying not to lean forward to press his forehead against Sherlock’s shoulder, then he thinks _fuck it_ , and does anyway, for the briefest moment. He straightens again a moment later, and Sherlock shoves the guitar into his hands.

Three streets away is a pub, and it’s open mic night and they haven’t been here in ages. Since before Moriarty.

Tonight, they go on as Genius and Friend, for old time’s sake, and play a few songs. To John’s surprise, Sherlock insists on taking the lead on one of their old favourites. Sherlock doesn’t look at John as he sings, but John knows it’s for him anyway. Sherlock is gifting this song back to him.

Sentimental twats, indeed. The pair of them.

_If I’m conducting light  
_ _What is it makes my darkness bright?  
_ _Because I am, I am, I am  
_ _Illuminated._

And their voices rise up, harmonising, the two sounds making one sound that is stronger and brighter and better than either will ever be alone.

 

 


End file.
